I love the shape of your garden. Looks wonderful woodyoak! It would be great to see this shot again after the garden fills in.

Carrie B.

Sure is an interesting view of your garden. It would be really nice to see the same view again once things have really started to grow.

Interesting shot! Tell him to do it in about a month for us.

glenda

It makes me nervous when he's up on the roof like that! But if he buys the wide angle lens (which he probably will - a friend is selling it at a good price..) he will no doubt be up there again at some point - probably more than once...

We are in the process of doing a sort of timelapse sequence of garden photos of the view from the porch, through the arbour to the bench. We want to take one at the start of each month - and probably weekly when things are growing and changing quickly. It should give a very interesting sequence of photos I think. Have any of you done that? If so, post the pictures! :-)

Woodyoak, that is a great shot! It's always interesting to get an arial perspective. Is that arbor that I see where the heptacodium grows? So, you're on a corner lot it looks like? Is the wisteria in the border on the right-hand side of the photo?

I got a camera last year and began to take some pictures as the seasons progressed. It is fun to go back to them. It's been nice this year because I can compare when things started growing/blooming. We seem to be having a pretty early spring this year.

I do hope he takes more photos as the seasons progress, but please tell him to be careful!! YIKES!!!

Thyme2dig - the heptacodium is the tree you can see on the right side of the bench. When it's in bloom and you look through the arbour, it appears closer to the arbour than it really is. No, we're not on a corner lot - that's our driveway that looks like an intersecting road in the picture. Yes, the Chinese wisteria is on the right side across from the back of the car. You can see the support posts. The Japanese wisteria is at the other end of that bed about where the shadow of the old cedar crosses the bed.

Here's another interesting view from above - Google Maps street view from August last summer! Talk about 'Big Brother watching you'...! (DH doesn't like that picture because he's lost weight since then. He retired in May last year and has lost 35 pounds since!)
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An update from the roof this morning... :-)
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The driveway is a bit of a cluttered mess at the moment. On the north side the big pots of blueberries and strawberries are sharing space with seedling vegetables and annuals hardening off.
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On the south side the big pots of peas and a pot of garlic are in front of the herb and Angel rose bed. When it gets a bit warmer, a couple of pots of beans will join them. (The backyard is too shady for veggies and such so the driveway is where our edible garden is located!)
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It looks so lush out there Woody! What I notice that you've done that was quite thoughtful, is that the shape of that front bed is not round and not quite rectangular and not really oval either..lol. It's an interesting shape made more interesting by the way in which you laid out the pathways. Not quite symmetrical and centered, which is pleasing to my eye. I think it makes it look larger. I also see you have a bench out there at the end of a path, that looks pretty private from the street. Nice. That structure that is in the front, is it an arbor? It looks tall from this angle. We didn't get any peas planted. Yours always look so lush! I'm going right into string beans now.

I love your gardens, front back, and alleyway. And the New Dawn that I will be interested to see how much it's grown this year.

PM2 - the main bed is currently in a quiet stage - the spring bulbs and flowering trees are largely finished for the season and the perennials just thinking about blooming. The wisteria is a diva and likes a solo act :-)

The bed shapes are largely dictated by the lawn shape and the sort of odd shape of the driveway. The initial shape was a teardrop shape that got its start from the bare ground that was there once we removed the large, rather ugly old white spruce that was there when we bought the house. The bed shape and paths evolved over the years as things 'felt right...'

The begining of the bed:
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The arbour is wrought iron - I designed it and a local iron craftsman built it for me. It's 7' tall. Mario is building me an 8' iron tuteur for the bed this spring. I was hoping to have it by now but his wife got sick so he put things on hold for a while.

Mario and his BIL installing arbour:
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I love seeing pictures of gardens at various stages. Great work!

That is a pretty arbor! Seven feet is nice, I usually find most pre-made arbors a little short. What made you think of having one made? Did you have trouble finding one you liked? I love the sound of the 8ft tuteur, where is it going and what are you going to plant on it?

That's very interesting to see what the bed looked like before you started g*ardening there. Since you have a shady backyard, makes perfect sense to take out an evergreen that was shading the front. I wonder if you ever considered putting a vegetable plot there, since you enjoy growing food? I have more sun in the front but not as large as your front and I've thought of growing vegetables out there, but I like to grow food away from the street and I just didn't want the casual, sometimes messy look out in the front.

Does it look odd to you to look at photos of 'pre-garden'? I feel like it was someone else's yard before we put our g*arden in. [g] This just 'feels' like ours and the way it was before just doesn't have any connection for me. Great to see the changes and from year to year how things get bigger and fuller.

Our g*arden has a fair spring display and a pretty good fall display with a summer lull. I'm working on adding bloom for June and the first half of July. I just started adding roses a couple of years ago, but the jury is still out as to whether I'll be able to keep them going and blooming. I just redesigned a section of bed using Iris, Verbascum and Columbine and this is the first year to observe it. The Iris are developing some viral leaf thing going on and I don't think I quite have the conditions they enjoy, so I'm going to stop living in denial and replace them with something else. Still percolating on what. I've also been influenced at Idylls to try more clematis and so far that is exciting and is working out well. How long a lull do you have and what blooms next for you? Even with a lull, you still have a lush g*arden and interesting foliage and texture.

Your Wisteria is wonderful! I wish photos came with fragrance. :-)

mollydog - and PM2 - I like looking at before-during-after pictures of things too. They remind you that all the work was worth it :-) All my Picturetrail albums ae set up chronologically so you can follow the changes. The real starting point for the garden here started with changing the house! My objective is not to have a house with a garden but to have a garden with a house in it! This was the house we started with in March 1999:
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PM2 - if the irises are of the tall bearded sort, my first assumption would be you've got iris borer problems. I've pretty much given up on those sorts of irises because of the borers. I only grow the Siberian or Japanese ones now, along with a few clumps of Iris gramminea for scent.

We used to have tomatoes in a few places in the main bed but the flowers took over...:-) They didn't grow well in pots for us so now they have a small space at the house end of the herb bed. I do often find garlic tucked into spaces - DH LOVES growing garlic! We grow peas, pole beans, lettuce, baby carrots, leeks, bunching onions, garlic, strawberries and blueberries in pots on the driveway.

My problem, PM2, is the opposite of yours. I've been trying to extend the show later into the summer/fall. That bed's main peak of color is June-early July. But it's gradually extending into later summer. The lull now will be finished in a week or two. The wisteria only flowers for 7-10 days and by the time it is finished the summer flowers will be bursting out. Peonies will be the next big showy things, although everything cascades rapidly for the next little while. If you want to get something that has a scent similar to that wisteria, try growing Blue Wave petunas. They have a somewhat similar sweet-clove scent. I grow them in boxes at the foot of the front porch steps.

Having the abour made was a decision we made after looking at a lot of ready-made ones and finding them too flimsy. That one is VERY heavy and set in concrete. The tutueur will be also set in concrete so it doesn't fall over and kill someone! It will be placed near the intersection of the two paths, on the right side behind the arbour. There will be 4 clematises on it. (Gardenbug is a bad influence :-)

You really did a makeover on your house before you got started with the garden. You've been busy! I think the larger window, the porch and the two car garage really made a big difference.

My favorite are the TBIris. You can really go wild collecting them if you have the room and conditions. I do have a Standard Bearded Iris that is actually pretty problem free. The only issue has been it increases so fast, it needs dividing every couple of years.

I'm down to 2 tomato plants every summer in my small vegetable plot. Still working with 6 hrs of sun for veggies in the back and cherries do fine. I tried containers and didn't like the result, either. I do like the tripod containers. Like you, I have a level lot with no grade changes, so I find vertical elements satisfying. We usually try a few pepper plants, eggplant or two and zucchini. I have one bed dedicated to asparagus a family favorite and a couple of whiskey barrels with strawberries. Does garlic like a lot of sun? I haven't had much luck with it.

Our Fall garden has a couple of asters that perform well without mildew problems and I've added about 10 chrysanthemums from Bluestone over the past three years that are proving to be hardy for me. Butterfly Bushes have a long summer bloom that goes right up until frost and Hardy Hibiscus that I keep working toward getting a good display with. Grasses, Hydrangeas that carry blooms. You have great Hibiscus, if I remember right. Have you seen 'Kopper King'? I bought one last year, the fall foliage is great! I've been adding Snow Angel pansies in the Fall that carry over to spring very well. I should really start my own in late summer but I never get to it.

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I didn't know Blue Wave petunias are fragrant. I am looking for some for a hanging pot, I'll look for those, thanks!

Yes, GB is a very bad influence in the clematis department...lol.

PM2 - the front window is still the same size - just a different style :-) The wider garage balances the mass of the right side of the house better so the house doesn't look so 'stubby' any more. DH thought I was crazy to want to buy the house but I saw what is there now, not the original :-)

I love hardy hibiscuses and will probably be adding more this year. I don't have Kopper King but do have Fireball which looks much the same re foliage - it was the main reason I bought it!

I grow the Blue Wave petunias from seed. I've never seen the scent issue included in the information in seed catalogs but they've always turned out wonderfully secented - mainly early in the morning and in the evening. I've also not seen them for sale in garden centers lately but if you check dark purple-blue petunias, I've found they often have scent. So sniff before you buy.... :-)

I bet DH is happy you had a plan. It really looks wonderful now, and must be very satisfying to be able to take ideas and end up with such a great result!

I didn't realize there were more Hibiscus with that foliage. I have Plum Crazy and it doesn't.

I didn't start one seed this year, but I hope to next year. I will definitely be sniffing at the nursery.

Thanks!

An update from the roof this morning...:-)

Summer color coming on nicely now but I'm still waiting for the tuteur that will go where you can see some tan-colored dead foliage neat the intersection of two paths on the left:
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The pink driveway border with the pot garden - we've been snacking on strawberries for breakfast for a few days now. On the other side of the driveway, the earliest pot of peas has pods and it'll soon be time to plant the pole beans.
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